


Dreaming Out Loud (If I Wake)

by Tricochet



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, Comatose Winn, Happy Ending, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, Written Before 3x15
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-27 14:18:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14427228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tricochet/pseuds/Tricochet
Summary: Winn finds himself unable to move after rescuing James, and he hears James make a confession.





	Dreaming Out Loud (If I Wake)

Winn stretches and leans back in his chair. 

“Quiet night on the town,” Winn says. His scanners show up clean. “Except for that person playing really loud music across from my van. That’s obnoxious.”

“Should we call it a night before you get a headache?” James asks through his helmet. Winn almost laughs.

“If you don’t see anything else that seems dangerous,” Winn says. One of his legs is asleep. He swivels in his chair to look at another screen. "I'll be okay. Uh, actually, there’s one thing you could check on your way back. There’s an unusual heat signature in an apartment that’s marked as empty. It’s probably just an anomaly, or maybe someone left something plugged in.”

“Okay. I’ll check it out,” James says. Winn directs him to the first floor of a compound. Winn can hear his footsteps until he pauses. He bites his lip and prays, like he always does, that James won’t be hurt. 

“Uh, there’s definitely something going on. There’s a weird bulge in the wall.”

“Don’t get any closer,” Winn says. He forces his voice to stay calm. Not freaking out while leading the man he loves into danger is something he struggles with every night. “It could be some kind of leak.” 

Winn stares at the hot spot on the scanner. It starts growing rapidly. 

“James! Get out of there!” Winn yells into the mic. He remotely turns on the Guardian helmet’s air filter. 

He sees the scanner turn red just as he hears James yell. The helmet readings show a blinking warning light by the air condition measurements. 

“James! Do you read?” Winn says into the mic. He just hears a hissing noise. “James!”

He jumps out of the van and runs. His asleep leg tingles and slows him down. He almost giggles from the sensation. As he moves, he starts to have second thoughts, even third thoughts. He doesn’t have any way to filter his own air. James might have just lost connection and be breathing fine, but Winn can’t risk losing him. Winn follows the hissing sound he’d heard over the mic. He passes the people standing by and heads toward the building. 

His breaths start to feel heavy, and his head is getting groggy. He sees the Guardian suit with a piece of pipe next to it and drags it by the arm. James seems unconscious, but Winn thinks he’s breathing through his helmet. 

Winn pulls him back. He can feel one of his legs still shaking. Someone else starts helping him carry James’s other arm, and Winn wishes that he worked out enough to lift James like James can carry him.

His leg gives out, but he pulls himself back up. His arms feel like he’s operating a foreign machine. He can’t get his fingers to close properly. He keeps moving.

Someone puts a piece of plastic over Winn’s mouth. He tries to scratch at them until he realizes it’s an oxygen mask and his arms aren’t working and that his vision is swirling. 

Winn hits the ground next to where James’s unconscious form lies.

Winn wonders what happened. All he can feel is a tube in his arm. It takes a minute for him to realize that one of his senses is missing. He can’t see anything. He tries to raise his hand, but it doesn’t work. It feels like less than a second since he passed out. He tries to open his eyes to look for James. He has to see if James is okay. 

“How the hell am I supposed to tell him?” Winn hears. The voice sounds like it’s coming underwater and through a plastic barrier. He still recognizes it as James’s. A wave of relief hits him at James being okay, even if Winn himself isn’t.

“You could just, you know, when he wakes up, tell him,” someone else says. Winn thinks it’s Kara. “I know that’s the actual reason you ended it with Lena.”

“No. He’s my friend, and I can’t do that to him. When he wakes up, I’ll just keep doing what I’ve been doing.”

“What, pretending you’re not desperately in love with him while you cling onto him every minute?”

“Yes!” James says. Winn’s eyebrows try to move, but the muscles don’t respond. He can’t tell if he’s dreaming or he died. 

“Look, the fact is,” James continues, “he almost died saving my life. He’s my best friend. I can’t ask him to be more than that. He’s like this because of me. If I hadn’t done that last patrol, if we hadn’t gone out tonight, if I hadn’t become Guardian, I could have stopped this.”

“James, staying in the chair by his bed for two days isn’t going to make him wake up any faster.”

Winn tries again to force his eyes open, but he can’t. He hears Kara give up and leave. He feels a warm hand squeeze his own. 

“I love you,” James whispers. 

“I love you too,” Winn tries to say back. 

A second later, Winn hears another voice in the lab. 

“His vitals haven’t changed for the most part. However, more brainwaves are showing up.”

“Does that mean he can hear me?” James asks.

“Probably not,” the other voice says. It might be Alex. “But he’s still aware of something, at some level.”

Winn feels a hand in his. 

“Winn, squeeze my hand if you can hear me.”

Winn tries his hardest to tense his fingers or make any movement at all, but he can’t. 

“You’re holding his hand again?” Alex says. 

Winn feels the hand in his drop. 

“Look, Kara told me to talk to you,” Alex continues. 

“About what?” James says sharply. “What did she say?”

“Nothing! Just that you haven’t eaten or slept in three days now.”

Winn wonders how it’s been a day since the last thing he heard, or if James had showered. 

The machine beeps. 

“Was that a brain activity spike?” James says hopefully.

“I don’t think so,” Alex says. “Just fluctuation.”

Winn tries again to make something show up to show that he’s okay. He thinks about James, and his mom, and Star Trek. Nothing works.

“I know you and Winn are close,” Alex says. “But this isn’t your fault. It was an accident. They’re unavoidable.”

“I know,” James says, but Winn can hear the quiver in his voice. 

Winn hears Alex’s footsteps and the door slam before he feels something wet on his hand. It takes another second for him to comprehend James’s sobs. 

“Come back to me, Winn. I love you,” James says in a broken voice. Winn strains against his body to get his muscles to respond. 

“His brain seems more active,” someone says. “He was exposed to the gas for so long that it’s just going to take a while.”

“But he’s going to be okay?” James asks. He sounds different. He’s not crying anymore, but he sounds more tired. Winn must have missed another few hours. 

“I believe so.”

He drifts in and out of consciousness, each time feeling like a second after the last. Mary visits him and talks quietly to James. 

“Olsen, we need you as backup,” J’onn says. 

“I can’t do that right now,” James tells him. 

James paces around the room at some point later. “I’ve thought about telling you so many times. I just never wanted to ruin our friendship. If you still want to be friends after this, I’ll be your friend. I know I’m going to have to tell you at some point. It’s just- I know you don’t love me too.”

Winn hears a beeping and James yells for help. 

“He’s thinking! Winn, can you hear us?” a doctor tells him.

James grabs Winn’s hand again, and Winn squeezes it as hard as he can.

“Alright. Winn, if you can hear me, squeeze twice.”

Winn squeezes James’s hand. He barely wants to let go enough for James to notice. 

The doctor taps Winn with something. 

“If you can feel that…”

Winn squeezes again. 

“Winn,” James says quietly. 

“Can you move anything else?” the doctor asks. “Once for no, twice for yes.”

Winn squeezes one time. 

“Okay. Are you in pain?”

Winn squeezes once. 

“Is there anything you need?”

Winn squeezes twice. 

He hears J’onn’s voice. “I’m going to use my telepathy to find out what you need. Is that okay?”

Winn squeezes yes. 

He feels J’onn’s mind in his brain somehow. He projects an image of James eating and sleeping. 

“Is that it?” J’onn asks. 

Winn squeezes two times. 

“Okay. James, Winn’s concerned about you. He wants you to get some food and rest."

“Oh,” James says quietly. He rubs the back of Winn’s hand. 

Winn can’t tell how long it’s been. The doctor pulls one of his eyes open. He moves a flashlight around until Winn’s eye comes into focus. He repeats with the other eye. 

Winn looks around. He’s in a bed with a tube in his arm. 

“Okay. Can you see?”

Winn blinks two times. 

“Good. It’s been a while since James left. He took a shower, slept for ten hours, and ate the worth of several meals. Do you want him to come back in?”

Winn blinks twice. 

James walks into the room. He still looks stressed, but he must be a lot better than when he hadn’t eaten or slept. 

His face lights up when he sees Winn looking. 

“Can you see?”

He takes Winn’s hand. Winn squeezes yes. 

“I’m really glad you’re okay,” James tells him. “Is it okay for me to sit on your bed?”

Winn squeezes yes again. James sits next to him. He looks into Winn’s face like he’s studying it. 

Winn blinks slowly at him, and James smiles. 

“Winn, I’m sorry. This is my fault.” 

Winn jerks his neck muscles to the side. He shakes his head with difficulty. 

“If you had died saving me…”

Winn shakes his head again. It feels like he’s moving it through jelly.

“Okay,” James says quietly. He kisses Winn’s hand. 

Winn opens his eyes again. He doesn’t know how long he’s been out cold, but it seems like just a second. He’s alone. He can’t tell if anything he remembers was real or just some sort of coma-induced dream. 

He stretches and feels his muscles contract. He’s uncomfortably aware of every tendon. He opens his mouth a few times experimentally, then tries to speak. It comes out a sort of gurgle, but at least he’s able to stick his tongue out. 

He flexes the rest of his muscles and sits up. He waves to someone outside his window, and they run in. 

“Winn!” the doctor says. “You can sit now!”

Winn nods.

“It’s fairly typical for speech to take a while to come back, but I’ll get you some paper so you can write. James will be so happy. He wouldn’t leave you for days.”

Winn nods blankly. The doctor runs to get him paper. James follows her inside and dashes to his side. 

“Winn!” James says. He almost reaches for Winn’s face, but he stops himself. “Hi.”

Winn smiles at him. He pats the bed beside him. James sits down. 

“Is there anything you need? Food?”

Winn shakes his head. The doctor walks away, leaving him with his head on James’s shoulder. Winn reaches for the paper and pen and writes. 

James reads the note and smiles. “Of course I can stay here, Winn. I’m not going anywhere.”

Winn shuts his eyes again and inhales the smell of James’s shirt. 

He feels rested for the first time since the accident when he wakes up. He’s surrounded by a nice smell and someone’s arms. 

He opens his eyes and leans his head back into James. 

“James,” he says. 

The limbs suddenly disappear as James sits up. 

“Winn! Are you okay? How are you doing?”

“James, I’m alright. I’m going to go to the bathroom. And then I’d like to talk to you.”

“Okay. Do you need any help walking?”

James offers Winn his arm while he stands up. He puts one of his hands on Winn’s waist to steady him. Winn wonders if there’s more to the casual touches than he’d always assumed. 

He can hear James pacing outside the bathroom until he steps out. Winn has fresh clothes and his teeth are brushed. He could still use a shower, but it can wait. 

He sits back in his bed and looks up at James. 

“So, I’ve been kind of half-conscious for a while, and I heard some stuff. I might have been dreaming, in which case we can forget all about this conversation.”

Winn can tell that James knows exactly what Winn is talking about from how his eyes get wider.

“Uh, James. So, I had some time to think when I was… you know. And there’s something that I knew before, but getting hurt this badly made me want to tell you. I love you, Olsen.”

“I love you too,” James says. 

“So it wasn’t a dream?”

“Not at all.”

“I am still alive, right? I didn’t die and go to heaven?”

James bends down so he’s at Winn’s eye level. “No, Winn. This is all real. You’re perfectly alive. I love you.”

“Wow,” Winn breathes. “Are you sure? Like, really-”

James rests his hands on the bed so he can kiss Winn. Winn forgets what to do with his hands for a second before he rests them down James’s back. He feels his own heartbeat pounding against James’s. 

“You know, this was worth getting knocked out,” Winn says. James pulls back to smile at him.

“This was worth staying in the folding chair in the corner,” James tells him. Winn looks over at the chair. It looks uncomfortable.

“You really do love me, huh?”

“Yeah,” James whispers. “I do.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this Scholsen! I have a few other projects to work on, but especially after I watch the next Supergirl episode, I might write more of these two.


End file.
